Mapping the Long Arc of Human Freedom
The "History of Liberty" is a cornerstone course at the New Hampshire Institute of Libertarian Sciences, providing students with the essential historical context for their philosophical and economic studies. It operates on the premise that liberty is not a modern invention but a perennial human aspiration, often suppressed but never extinguished. The course is not a whiggish narrative of inevitable progress, but a clear-eyed examination of the cyclical struggle between centralized power and dispersed, voluntary social organization. By studying past experiments—both successful and catastrophic—students gain perspective on current challenges and a repertoire of strategies and warnings for building a freer future.
Ancient and Medieval Foundations of Spontaneous Order
The course begins by challenging the statist assumption that complex society requires a ruler. We examine the archeological and historical evidence for stateless societies among hunter-gatherer bands and early agricultural communities. A major focus is on the classical world: the democratic but often tyrannical experiment of Athens is contrasted with the more mixed system of the Roman Republic, with its concepts of private property and civic virtue that later influenced liberal thought. We spend significant time on the often-overlooked examples of polycentric law and voluntary association: the Law Merchant (lex mercatoria) that governed medieval trade across Europe without a central authority, and the Icelandic Commonwealth (930-1262 AD), a society with no executive branch, where law was declared by a central thing (assembly) but enforcement was entirely private.
The rise of the absolutist state in early modern Europe is studied as a great setback for liberty, but one that spawned its own intellectual resistance. We trace the development of classical liberal ideas through the Levellers, John Locke, the French Physiocrats, and the American Founders. The American Revolution is analyzed not as a perfect creation of liberty but as a flawed experiment that created a limited government which, predictably from a public choice perspective, began to expand immediately. The Anti-Federalist warnings are given serious study as prophetic critiques.
The 19th and 20th Centuries: The Rise and Fall of Classical Liberalism
The course charts the astonishing progress of classical liberal ideas in the 19th century, leading to unprecedented economic growth, the abolition of slavery, and expansion of civil liberties. However, we also study the counter-revolution: the rise of collectivist ideologies (Marxism, fascism, progressivism) that redefined freedom as obedience to a collective will and justified massive state expansion. The 20th century is presented as the great battleground between these forces, culminating in the horrors of total war, genocide, and the total state. Students analyze how even ostensibly liberal democracies steadily eroded property rights and personal freedoms through the welfare-warfare state.
Amidst this gloom, the course highlights the intellectual resistance: the lonely work of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek in defending the market order, the revival of radical libertarian thought by Murray Rothbard and others in the post-war period, and the practical failures of socialism that became undeniable by the late 1980s. The fall of the Berlin Wall is seen not as an endpoint, but as a moment of opportunity soon co-opted by managed globalism and neoconservatism.
The Modern Movement and the Free State Project
The final section of the course brings history to the present. We study the late 20th and early 21st-century libertarian movement, from the founding of think tanks to the rise of the internet as a tool for agorist activity and decentralized organization. A central case study is the Free State Project (FSP), the agreement by thousands of libertarians to move to New Hampshire to concentrate their efforts. Students analyze the FSP as a modern, deliberate attempt to recreate the conditions for a free society through voluntary migration and focal point strategy—a direct application of historical lessons about the importance of critical mass and cultural change.
- Primary Source Analysis: Students read excerpts from the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, and Rothbard's For a New Liberty.
- Historical Simulations: Role-playing exercises where students attempt to design a constitution for a new colony or navigate the legal system of medieval Iceland.
- Research Paper: Each student produces an in-depth analysis of a specific historical "liberty experiment," evaluating its causes, functioning, and reasons for success or failure.
The course concludes with a challenging question: Given this long and turbulent history, what strategy today holds the most promise for achieving a lasting free society? Students are tasked with synthesizing the lessons of history with the philosophical and economic tools they've acquired, preparing them not just to know history, but to make it.